“Oy! Albigard!” he called. “Time for that breakfast meeting!”
There was no reply. Len sighed again and started tramping along the largest of the tracks, which he knew would eventually lead to a walking trail in the nature preserve that abutted the property. When he hit the part that he was pretty certain was public land, he turned back and took a different track that ran perpendicular to the first.
About five minutes later, he came to an abrupt halt, a chill trickling down his spine, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. His heart rate kicked into overdrive.
“Shit,” he whispered. “Oh, shit.” Raising his voice, he yelled, “Albigard! Fucking answer me, goddamn it! We’ve got a problem!”
A faint rustling in the underbrush heralded the Fae’s arrival, and Len threw an arm up to stop him. “No! Stay back. Just... tell me what that looks like to you.” He pointed at the patch of blackened leaves and twigs in front of him.
Albigard’s sharp intake of breath was barely audible. “The Hunt. It’s been here.”
“Damn it. That’s what I was afraid you were going to say,” Len said. “Why is the closest edge of the dead area so regular? Is this the edge of the wards?”
The Fae took a cautious step closer, examining the zone of wilted leaves and blackened wildflowers. It was maybe ten feet across at its widest point, but where the sides and back were an irregular shape, the front edge looked like the Hunt had hit a wall and stopped.
“It is,” Albigard confirmed. “These wards would not act as an effective barrier in Dhuinne, but it appears that the Hunt is still at least somewhat disoriented within the human realm. The warding spells work by redirecting attention away from the thing being protected.”
His tone sounded oddly detached. Faraway.
Len snapped his fingers in front of the Fae’s face. “Hey. We need to get you inside the house. And then we need to figure out our next move—right the fuck now.”
Albigard let out a little huff of air—a sound of grim amusement. “Inside is no safer than outside.”
“Yeah? Well, that’s still where we’re going. Move.” Len turned him bodily with a hand on his shoulder and gave him a brisk shove in what he sincerely hoped was the direction of the house. The Fae let himself be pushed, which was a bit of a red flag in and of itself. Len wasn’t sure if shock affected Fae the same as it did humans, but Albigard had already been walking the razor’s edge of emotional control after Rans and Zorah’s death—not to mention his own brush with capture and near-execution.
Even so, he led the way unerringly back to the house. Len followed, glancing over his shoulder the entire way as though he expected the Wild Hunt to jump out and try to grab them at any moment. When the patio door slid shut behind them, he let out a sigh of relief, irrational though it probably was.
He rounded on Albigard. “Okay. Talk to me. What are our options here?”
The Fae swallowed and licked his lips, his throat bobbing. “One. We can stay here and hope the wards continue to stymie it.”
“Putting a whole new city at risk,” Len pointed out.
“Two. I could attempt to portal to a remote location, far from human habitation. If it followed me, that might buy time for another solution to be found. If you stayed behind the wards for a day or two until my essence faded from the area, it would probably be safe for you to leave and return to St. Louis.”
Len shook his head. “Firstly, we’re not splitting up. Neither of us is likely to be better off alone during this mess.”
“A matter of opinion,” Albigard said.
“And secondly, I don’t see how that ultimately helps the situation,” Len plowed on, ignoring him. “Either it catches up to you and kills you—at which point we no longer have any way at all to predict where it’s going to show up next—or it decides to ignore you in favor of eating its way unchecked through an area with no human habitation, getting bigger and stronger as it goes until we have no hope of ever controlling it. Give me another option.”
“Three. I could return to Dhuinne as I’d previously planned.”
Len’s jaw clenched. “That still doesn’t solve the problem of the thing being able to burrow between worlds like some kind of inter-dimensional gopher. As we discussed last night.”
Albigard hesitated.
“What?” Len demanded.
“You spoke of the need for allies.”
“Yes?” Len pressed.
“There is still Teague.”
Len scowled. “He double-crossed your stupid Fae ass barely two days ago.”
“I am well aware.” Albigard’s lips thinned. “Though in doing so, he also succeeded in brokering a ceasefire with the envoy from Dhuinne long enough for us to close the breach.”
Len felt his jaw clench. “He’s still an asshole.”
“He prioritized the safety of both Earth and Dhuinne above whatever loyalty he holds for a former commander who is now a condemned fugitive.” The words were delivered in a carefully controlled monotone. “It was not a dishonorable choice to make.”
Silence settled between them as Len digested that. He took a slow breath, aware that he’d been the one to press Albigard for other possible allies, even if they weren’t perfect ones.
“So,” Len said slowly, “you think he can be counted on to act in the best interest of Earth’s safety, separate from whatever other personal failings he might have?”
“That much seems clear, yes.”
Len nodded, despite his misgivings. “Okay, then. What’s the best way to reach him?”
Albigard ran a hand through his mane of platinum hair—a tired gesture. “He will still be in St. Louis, presumably.”
“Do you think if we went back to St. Louis right away, the Hunt might follow you there rather than starting in on Chicago?” Len asked.
“There is no way of knowing,” Albigard replied.
“Yeah, that’s not going to be good enough,” Len told him. “We’ll need to contact someone here who’ll take the threat seriously and evacuate the area, like Teague did in St. Louis.”
“I don’t know who replaced me in the Chicago overkeep after I was ousted.” Albigard’s expression was carefully neutral. “I have no means of contacting the new Fae warden directly.”
Len thought for a moment. “But Teague would, right? And you have a way to get hold of him?”
Albigard hesitated. “Yes.”
“Okay. So, you do that. I’ll call emergency services, plus a couple of local news outlets, and try to light a fire under them. I can tell them that the same ‘chemical’ that supposedly spilled in St. Louis has been released here as well. Ask why no one’s taking action. That should start a pressure campaign for local government to at least look into it, and maybe it’ll get the Fae’s attention, too. Do you need to use my phone?” He hesitated. “Er... can you even use my phone? Without breaking it, I mean.”
Albigard waved the words away. “There is a rotary phone in the house, connected to a landline. I had service reconnected when it became clear I would be forced to stay here.”
Len blinked. “A rotary phone? Wow. The nineteen-fifties called. They said to tell you they want their tech back.”
The Fae scowled at him. “Analog technology does not itch in the same way as digital technology.”
That was... interesting, and sort of made sense when you took into account that Albigard’s aura hadn’t fried the transistor radio in Len’s ancient Lincoln Continental.
“Huh. Well... let’s get to it, so we can get out of here before our soul-sucking friend decides to come back.” He hesitated. “I’ll go outside for my calls, that way you don’t have to worry about tamping down your Fae mojo or whatever.”
Alarm flashed in Albigard’s green eyes. “No. You should stay in the house.”
Len stared at him for a moment, confused. Then his eyebrows shot up. “Dude. What happened to ‘inside is no safer than outside’? Plus, you’re forgetting something important. The Hunt doesn’t like
me very much. Apparently, I reek of death or some bullshit like that.”
The Fae opened his mouth to reply, but the words seemed to catch for a moment. “Stay inside the wards,” he managed after a brief pause.
“Yeah, I’d planned on it, thanks,” Len told him. “In spite of what you may have been led to believe, I’m not actually a complete idiot.”
Albigard’s expression closed off. “You attacked an angry cu-sidhe with pepper spray, and walked into the grasp of the Wild Hunt without knowing what would happen to you. I consider the matter up for debate.”
Len’s lips twitched in irritation. “Fuck you, too. Go make your nineteen-fifties rotary phone call. I’ll be back in a bit.”
THREE
TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES later, Len returned to the house. Though he had no intention of telling Albigard, he’d returned to the edge of the wards where they’d found the Wild Hunt’s newest incursion so he could get precise GPS coordinates. It wasn’t a frivolous risk—he’d wanted to be able to give the 911 operator something a bit more concrete than ‘near the edge of the Messenger Woods Nature Preserve.’ Happily, the dead patch seemed unchanged from earlier that morning.
Even with the coordinates, the operator had sounded both bored and skeptical as he relayed his crazy sounding report. She did grow a bit more engaged when he trotted out his rusty emergency services lingo, however—proving that he was at least a few steps up the evolutionary ladder from some random junkie calling in a drug-fueled hallucination.
Since Len and drug-fueled hallucinations were actually pretty well acquainted, the irony wasn’t lost on him. At any rate, it seemed likely that they’d at least send a squad car out to check on the situation, though it was anybody’s guess whether the officers would take one look at the blackened patch of forest and assume it was just a small fire that had burned itself out.
He had higher hopes for the other calls he’d made, leaving anonymous tips with several news outlets—accusing the city government of ignoring evidence of a chemical release identical to the one that had destroyed an entire neighborhood in St. Louis. With luck, media sensationalism would cause enough of an uproar to get the attention of whichever Fae was in charge behind the scenes, assuming Albigard wasn’t able to get a message through to them before then.
Albigard was in the kitchen looking jumpy when Len entered.
“Any luck on your end?” Len asked.
The Fae shook his head. “I was forced to leave a message.”
“Okay, well—the police should be sending someone out to take a look at the dead patch.” Len hesitated. “Which I sincerely hope doesn’t backfire spectacularly if the Hunt decides to come back while they’re there.”
Albigard raised an eyebrow. “If nothing else, the mysterious death of uniformed officers would likely motivate quicker action from the authorities.”
Len frowned at him. “Nice.”
“And the media?” Albigard pressed.
“Seemed much more interested in the situation than the 911 operator did,” Len confirmed. “After St. Louis, something like this must look like an automatic ratings boost. With luck, it’ll be plastered all over the local papers and TV. That should get someone’s attention. I hope.”
“In that case, we should leave now.”
Len regarded him closely. “For St. Louis? You don’t want to wait until you hear back from Teague?”
“No.” The Fae paced across the kitchen, restless. “It will be easier to arrange a meeting once we are there. And as you so astutely pointed out earlier, I have no wish to place yet another human city within the Hunt’s sights if it can be avoided.”
Len, by contrast, wasn’t all that thrilled about potentially luring the thing back to his city. But at least the area around his neighborhood had already been evacuated, so if the Hunt returned there, the place wouldn’t be crawling with innocent people. Also, the Hunt would have to make a brand new hole through the veil, since they’d patched the old one. That would presumably give them some extra breathing space.
Len nodded reluctantly. “All right. We can go to my place.” Zorah’s place, he almost said, but caught himself before the words slipped out. “Do we, uh, need to find an old car or something for the trip?”
“That will not be necessary,” Albigard said, and from his tight tone, Len got the impression the Fae was every bit as aware as he was of who truly owned the house where Len lived. “Come.”
He took a steadying breath as Albigard gestured a flaming portal into existence without ceremony. Stepping through it, he swallowed hard against the disconcerting stomach-swooping sensation, as his feet landed on the familiar threadbare carpet of his living room. Albigard followed immediately behind him, snapping the portal shut with a flick of his fingers once they were through.
The Fae glanced around the room, his gaze falling on the battered sofa with distaste.
“Make yourself right at home,” Len said dryly. “I want to do a quick walkthrough. This is the first time I’ve been back since...” His throat closed around the words, since the Hunt killed everyone and everything in my neighborhood.
Albigard seemed to understand the unspoken conclusion to the sentence, because he nodded absently in response. Len left him alone in the living room to brood, and headed toward the kitchen. Sick curiosity drew him to check on the state of the few living things he’d kept inside his house. As expected, nothing remained of his sad little collection of houseplants except for brown and drying leaves, flattened against their potting soil.
He hadn’t been sure about the food in his fridge—but apparently vegetables were still living things, because the Hunt had turned them into slimy, deflated shapes inside their plastic bags. By contrast, the milk smelled all right, and the packaged meat in the freezer seemed fine. He closed the refrigerator door and went down the hall to his bedroom for clean clothes.
Unfortunately, the stench of decay that permeated the entire neighborhood hadn’t spared his closet. He changed anyway, because if they stayed here for any length of time, the clothes he’d been wearing would absorb the smell as well. At least the new change of clothes didn’t also reek of two-day-old sweat.
He’d purposely been avoiding the windows, having little desire for any more reminders of the devastation outside. Movement in the corner of his eye as he was pulling a dark hoodie over his head made him turn, however... and that was when he saw the work crews across the street.
“What the hell?” he muttered, jamming his arms into the sleeves and hurrying down the hall to the front room where he’d left Albigard.
The Fae was standing in front of the living room window, his expression drawn into tight lines. “Fools,” he hissed.
Outside, workers labored with rakes and tillers, sowing fresh grass seed in the dead lawns and covering it with straw. Down the street, a tree-trimming crew fired up their industrial wood chipper as Len watched in disbelief, feeding it branches from the huge oak that had died while he was out having coffee on the morning of the attack. Someone had swept up and disposed of the dead birds and squirrels that had been littering the roadway.
A woman whose neat pantsuit screamed ‘real estate agent’ walked slowly down the sidewalk with a clipboard in her hand, stopping to take notes at every house. Len resisted the urge to rub at his eyes, in hopes that the scene outside the window would somehow change.
“They opened it back up?” he asked. “Are they crazy?”
The last time he’d been here, the place had been under military control, cordoned off and under constant drone surveillance, with the area around it evacuated. And now, they were bringing in landscapers?
He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it. “What the actual fuck!”
A muscle twitched in Albigard’s jaw. “Human avarice. No doubt there are surviving relatives clamoring for the sale of the homes, since scientific testing will have shown no evidence of harmful residue in the area.”
Len made a noise of frustration. “I thought your people were supposed
to be running all this from behind the scenes. In fact, isn’t that Teague’s literal job?”
“Yes,” Albigard said in a flat tone. “It is.”
Len tried to think past his paranoid worry that the Hunt would show up any minute and start eating people again. “All right. We need non-magical transportation, and all I’ve got here is... um... a motorcycle.” Specifically, it was Rans’ beloved black Triumph, parked under a fitted rain cover in the back yard. The reminder of Rans made Len’s already nauseated stomach churn.
Albigard sent him a sidelong glance. “What about your... car?” The word dripped with distaste.
“Shut up and don’t diss my car. It has character,” Len retorted out of habit. “It’s in storage, not too far from here.”
“Is there a phone inside this dwelling?” the Fae asked.
“You mean a landline? No, just my cell phone.” He thought for a moment. “But I’m betting there’s one across the street and one house east of here. The owner was elderly.” And dead. They’re all dead. Betty is dead. “I assume you can use your creepy Fae influence to get in there, even if someone tries to stop you, right?”
Albigard grunted what was probably meant as an affirmative reply.
“Fine,” Len said. “In that case, you can go try and get hold of your slacker protégé. I’ll stay here and check my emails and messages again. Maybe also see if I can bum a ride from someone to get the Lincoln out of mothballs, since I’m guessing you’ve never been to the self-storage place west of Tower Grove Park, and can’t portal us there.”
“You guess correctly.” The Fae pushed away from the windowsill. “I will return in a few minutes.”
He turned and walked out the front door. Len watched him head toward Betty’s house for a moment before pulling his phone out of his pocket. He powered it on, revealing a bit more of the screen obscured by the leaking LCD material. Still no messages from Vonnie or his vampire ex-boss... but there was another message from Kat.
Forsaken Fae: The Complete Series, Books 1-3 (Last Vampire World) Page 19